We are finally World Design Capital!
01 Jan 2022 /

We are finally World Design Capital!

And the time has come. Our year has come. The year of design, of Valencia, of the Valencian Community, of its industry and of its enormous creative talent. The year in which we will be the focus of the best national and international design. The one for showing the world our way of being, of creating, of enjoying life, of feeling, of undertaking and of living. In all this, there is a large part of creativity and design.

And we did it by ringing the bells in a Valencia City Hall dressed in yellow for the occasion, toasting design and its entire ecosystem and creative fabric, with a fireworks display that welcomed the year of Valencian creativity. And we reached this moment with the support of institutions, companies, professionals in the sector and society in general. Dozens of projects undertaken in the last two years, a united ecosystem, numerous established strategic alliances and a program with more than one hundred activities aimed at local, national and international audiences have warmed up the engines.

The beginning of 2022 is loaded with numerous exhibitions, workshops and conferences on design applied to the environment and sustainability, diversity, heritage and the identity of Valencia in multiple spaces and betting on new formats.

2022 begins by addressing the Valencia of the future from design. On February 3 in Las Naves, the “Perspectiva 2030” meetings will begin, organized by Non Architecture as a collective creation project that will be developed by the students of the degree in design engineering as a curricular activity during and that will be exhibited in the month of June. The cycle is born from the València 360° project, which presents a photographic work that can be seen with a 360° viewer. The images created by 5 emerging creative teams imagine a Valencia of the future where utopia and dystopia swim in parallel and can hardly be differentiated.

The Territorial Association of Architects of Valencia will inaugurate the exhibition “Lina Bo Bardi a Bahia” on February 8 to go through one of the most creative and at the same time lesser known periods of Italian-Brazilian architecture. Pieces of the work of Lina Bo Bardi made in Bahia between 1958 and 1964, when she was director of the Museum of Modern Art of Bahia, and between 1986 and 1990, when she carried out the pilot project for the Historic Center of Salvador de Bahia, will be shown.

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On February 11, the public will be able to see Why am I like this?, an exhibition for the Center del Carme Cultura Contemporània (CCCC) organized and produced jointly by the Consorci de Museus de la Comunitat Valenciana and World Design Capital Valencia 2022, with the support of the Provincial Council of Valencia.

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Starting on February 19, Paradís Festival will revolutionize the city with express conferences and open debate on design. In a fun and entertaining way, Paradís will tell stories about creativity and innovation. In this second edition, trademarks and patents will be discussed in a didactic and playful format to highlight the importance of registering trademarks and thus avoid possible disappointments in the future.

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From February 24 to June 19, IVAM Gallery will host the exhibition “Anni and Josef Albers: art and life“, curated by Julia Garimorth and produced by the Institut Valencià d’Art Modern (IVAM). The exhibition will present the work of two great artists, Anni and Josef Albers, who were pioneers of modernity in the 20th century through their lines of artistic production. The exhibition covers their entire artistic career, both individually and together, and it is the first time in Spain that the work of the artists is presented as a couple throughout their different creative stages. The exhibition is organized chronologically and is made up of approximately 350 works including paintings, photographs, design and textiles, films, documentary material, and a selection of pieces of furniture from the Bauhaus period that represent the fundamental milestones in the career of this couple of artists.

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From February 25 to May 29 you can visit the Palau de Valeriola “Pepe Gimeno. Through Post-Truth”, an exhibition organized by the Chirivella Soriano Foundation. The exhibition covers the long and prolific professional and artistic career of almost five decades of this Valencian creator through his latest plastic works, without forgetting his vocation for typographic design and typography, one of the most recognized from him. Through typography as a tool, journalism and reflection on art, his speech articulates all of his work around the concept of “post-truth”.

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On March 3, the exhibition “Graphic Route. The sound design of Valencia”, produced by the Institut Valencià d’Art Modern (IVAM). This will x-ray one of the most unknown aspects of the clubbing scene generated in the city between the 1980s and 1990s by the general public: posters and graphic design. Its objective will be to offer a unifying story about the evolution of graphic design around what was popularly called the Ruta del Bakalao, going through the Valencian tradition of comics and illustration, the arrival of musical and aesthetic modernity in the eighties and the digital techniques that defined the last stage of the phenomenon.

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These are just some of the activities that you can discover in our agenda, where we will be adding the complete program of activities.

On March 10, the Center del Carme Cultura Contemporània (CCCC) will welcome Stuart Mangrum, who will give the conference “Burning Man: A Living Laboratory for Civic Design”. Mangrum will reflect on the evolution of Burning Man: from being an “anarchist temporary autonomous zone” to becoming a full-fledged city. Burning Man’s annual pop-up metropolis, Black Rock City, is a living laboratory for civic design, studied by scholars and experts from around the world.

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